C'mon guys, don't be scary.
New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a goal for his Republican caucus:
Don't be "scary." And just as, in 2010, his biggest goal for Senate Republicans was to stop President Obama from being re-elected, McConnell's goal now is all about the presidency.
“I don’t want the American people to think that if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome. I want the American people to be comfortable with the fact that the Republican House and Senate is a responsible, right-of-center, governing majority,” the Kentucky Republican said in a broad interview just before Christmas in his Capitol office.
In translation, "we don't have the votes to override the president's veto anyway, so our best shot at getting our full apocalyptic agenda passed is to pretend to be nonthreatening for long enough to con voters into giving Republicans the power to ram through every unpopular thing we can think of, while blocking votes on popular measures like raising the minimum wage."
Obviously, McConnell's plan to be not-scary is sharply at odds with the plans of people like Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and about half the House Republicans—they're all about being scary—so expect fireworks.